Alice in Wonderland
I’ve sunken into a reading (and blogging) malaise this week. It’s partly that I’m really enjoying teaching the K-1 chemistry class at co-op, and when I have a free moment my thoughts seem to gravitate toward activities and ideas related to that. I’m not feeling that great this week either, running an ear infection that I won’t have a chance to get checked out till tomorrow night. (Unless I take the girls with me to the doctor, that is. But I try to avoid taking them to waiting rooms filled with sickness unless they’re already sick.)
These things have contributed to my lack of progress in the longer tome on church history I had undertaken, and yesterday I found myself grabbing some long-neglected children’s books at the library — not for the girls, but for myself. This was one of them.
That’s right: I’ve never read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I remember seeing the Disney movie (or was it only part of the movie?) as a child, and not liking it. I don’t remember much about it, but apparently this impression was strong enough to prevent me from exploring this classic for all these years.
As I was reading it, I thought of George MacDonald, so I wasn’t surprised to find that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (”Lewis Carroll”) was friends with him, and that it was the MacDonald childrens’ enthusiastic reception of the unfinished Alice manuscript that convinced Dodgson to submit it for publication. It was interesting reading about the story’s origin as an oral tale invented on a boat ride and told to three young girls. Apparently it’s full of allusions to the author’s friends, as well as its share of reaction to the 19th-century political and social world.
I thought of George MacDonald because there seems to be so much more meaning than meets the eye in — well, everything. Yet where MacDonald achieves the effect through many features of the story (word play included), this story does it through nonsense — tricks of logic, word play, absurdity. It’s all quite dazzling. To me, it doesn’t make for a terribly engaging story, but it’s a great show. I might see what my daughters, at least my oldest, thinks of the tale.
The version I read was the ultimate illustrated edition , which includes works by a long list of illustrators over the years. I loved seeing all the different interpretations of Alice and the various characters she meets. The story itself? I liked it, but I think I like a story where something actually happens more than a dreamlike, symbolic tale like this.
